Open source software communities, service providers and network and technology vendors come together to deliver an industry-standard open source NFV platform
SAN FRANCISCO, June 4, 2015 — The OPNFV Project, a carrier-grade, integrated, open source platform to accelerate the introduction of new Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) products and services, today announced the availability of OPNFV Arno, the community’s first software release. Arno is aimed at anyone who is exploring NFV deployments, developing Virtual Network Functions (VNF) applications, or interested in NFV performance and use case-based testing. This developer-focused release provides an initial build of the NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) and Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM) components of ETSI NFV architecture.
In the eight months since launching, OPNFV has brought together more than 100 developers from network operators, solution providers and vendors who are collaborating to build the foundation for a flexible open source NFV platform by integrating and testing components from relevant upstream projects. The OPNFV community has quickly formed and built processes to work on 2 projects that span the range of requirements needed to build NFV solutions. The work is supported by 57 member companies who bring diverse perspectives and capabilities for addressing the industry’s need for a standard, open approach to deploying NFV platforms.
“Only eight months after its formation, OPNFV has met one of its major goals by creating an integrated build, deployment and testing environment that accelerates NFV implementation and interoperability,” said Prodip Sen, chairman of the OPNFV board of directors. “With Arno, we now have a solid foundation for testing some of the key resource orchestration and network control components for NFV. This is great a testament to the power of an open source collaborative model and the strength of the NFV ecosystem.”
“The increasing interest and demand for quicker adoption and implementation of NFV is the driving force behind the collaborative efforts of the OPNFV community,” said Chris Price, technical steering committee chair, OPNFV. “Arno is a major step in achieving these goals, implementing a congruent NFV platform for accelerated development and application deployment across the industry.”
Key capabilities of OPNFV Arno:
- Availability of baseline platform: Arno enables continuous integration, automated deployment and testing of components from upstream projects such as Ceph, KVM, OpenDaylight, OpenStack and Open vSwitch. It allows developers and users to automatically install and explore the platform.
- Ability to deploy and test various VNFs: End users and developers can deploy their own or third party VNFs on Arno to test its functionality and performance in various traffic scenarios and use cases.
- Availability of test infrastructure in community-hosted labs: Agile testing plays a crucial role in the OPNFV platform. With Arno, the project is unveiling a community test labs infrastructure where users can test the platform in different environments and on different hardware. This test labs infrastructure enables the platform to be exercised in different NFV scenarios to ensure that the various open source components come together to meet vendor and end user needs.
- Allows automatic continuous integration of specific components: As upstream projects are developed independently they require testing of various OPNFV use cases to ensure seamless integration and interworking within the platform. OPNFV’s automated toolchain allows continuous automatic builds and verification.
“Delivering Arno within eight months is a true testament to the benefits of an open source collaborative model,” said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. “With Arno, end users can delve into the platform and begin testing use cases right away. Our goal for future releases is to continue enhancing the platform with new features that address specific real-world scenarios and carrier-grade requirements.”
Comments from OpenDaylight
“NFV has gone from idea to reality so quickly. I am hearing from every major operator their plans to deploy SDN and NFV and see the OPNFV project as playing a critical role in this vision becoming a reality. It’s great to see the OPNFV community has chosen OpenDaylight as a key component of their project and the Arno release,” said Neela Jacques, executive director, OpenDaylight.
Comments from OpenStack
“Delivering Arno in a short amount of time shows the potential of open source collaboration,” said Jonathan Bryce, executive director, OpenStack Foundation. “The OpenStack community looks forward to working closely with OPNFV and accelerating the evolution of NFV.”
Comments from ETSI NFV ISG
“We are very happy to see the adoption of components of ETSI NFV architecture in Arno. This is a major milestone for OPNFV and the NFV ecosystem in building the integrated open source NFV platform. We congratulate the community and are looking forward to future releases,” said Dr. Steven Wright (AT&T), chairman of ETSI NFV ISG.
Information about Arno is available here: https://www.opnfv.org/arno.
Those who are interested in collaborating on OPNFV and shaping the future of networking can learn more here: https://www.opnfv.org/developers/how-participate .
About Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV)
Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) is a carrier-grade, integrated, open source platform to accelerate the introduction of new NFV products and services. It brings together service providers, vendors and users to collaborate in an open forum on advancing the state-of-the-art in NFV. For more information, please visit: http://www.opnfv.org.
OPNFV is a Collaborative Project at The Linux Foundation. Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems.www.linuxfoundation.org
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Jill Lovato
OPNFV Project
pr@opnfv.org